


The Vulcan Way

by WerewolvesAreReal



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Cadets, F/F, Humor, M/M, POV Outsider, Post-Movie(s), Post-Series, Starfleet Academy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 03:58:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5319572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WerewolvesAreReal/pseuds/WerewolvesAreReal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nyla and T'Mir have been tasked with a mission: get a picture of Admiral Kirk and Captain Spock kissing. It's harder than you might expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Vulcan Way

“What kind of photography club hazes people?” is what Nyla wants to know.

Serghei Ionescu tilts his chin stubbornly. “Starfleet Academy has a long, proud tradition of supporting the arts. In the vein of that tradition we want only the most serious of -”

Just to cut him off, she asks, “You're not going to make us do anything, like, perverted, are you?”

Serghei stops and starts to sputter.

Nyla tries to share a commiserating glance with the other newest member, T'Mir. But she only receives a blank stare in return. Right - Vulcan.

“No one at Starfleet does any serious hazing,” says Marel Sheppard, the Vice-President of the club. “We're not going to... Beat you, or anything.”

Nyla raises her eyebrows and folds her arms. “Well... That's good.”

“That is reassuring,” T'Mir deadpans. Everyone pauses and looks at her to gauge for seriousness.

“...No beating,” says Serghei firmly.

“Well. So what are we doing?”

Marel shifts and straightens her shoulders. “You need to take a picture of Admiral Kirk and Captain Spock, together. Kissing.”

Nyla gapes.

“Interesting,” says T'Mir.

“What – how?” Nyla asks. “Are they even - “

“That's the tradition,” Serghei says. “Everyone has to do it, ever since those two came to the Academy. You can work together, but you need a picture – are you up to it?”

“I - “ Nyla glances at T'Mir. But the Vulcan is already nodding. Oh. Well, heck, she can't back out now. Biting her lip, she nods. “...Alright. Yeah. No problem.”

“Great. We'll be waiting.”

* * *

 

When the two girls leave, the other members lean back and grin at each other.

“How long do you think this will take?” asks one.

Marel turns and smirks at Serghei. He looks embarrassed. “Don't look at me like that!”

“Hopefully not as long as it took Serghei,” she says.

“Half the academy thinks Spock and Kirk are dating – even the professors. Professor Morston mentioned what a 'nice couple' they are just last week! It's a hard joke!”

“It only took me three days to realize they weren't together,” someone else says.

“I'm still suspicious about that,” Marel tells the girl. “ - Anyway, they'll crawl back eventually when they can't get the shot. Let's not worry about it, yeah?”

* * *

 

“How should we begin our task?”

“Hang on,” Nyla says. She snaps a few pictures of herself, grinning at the camera and then sticking out her tongue. For the last picture she gives an exaggerated wink. Then she pulls back the camera to look at the results. “Ugh.”

“Is the camera the club provided insufficient?”

“What? No, it's great.” Nyla shakes the instrument in question, peering down at it. “Just – look at my curls, geez. That's some frizz.”

“...I see.”

Nyla looks up. T'Mir has seated herself lotus-position on the ground of the dorm apartment across from Nyla. With her back straight, she looks like some strange foreign queen, her sleek black hair piled over her head like a crown. Her eyebrows are swept up toward the sky and her cheekbones could probably cut glass. Nyla kind of wants to touch them and find out for herself.

“...Anyway,” she says. “I asked around. Apparently those two have this weird, domestic lunch-date habit where they eat together every Tuesday and Thursday, right? But the place changes all the time. So we just need to figure out where they're eating, follow them, and snap the picture. I mean, what better time to kiss than on a date?”

“You are assuming that these meetings constitute dates. Perhaps they are work-related.”

“I've heard about some of these places – no one goes to 'Acquerello' for work, T'Mir.”

“I am not familiar with it.”

“Fancy Italian place. Anyway, it's a plan. See you Tuesday.”

* * *

 

The plan does not go off without a pile of hitches.

T'Mir comm-calls Nyla to inform her that she has found Kirk on the west side of campus Tuesday morning. Nyla goes to her position only for Kirk to be beamed away unexpectedly in a transporter, which means that they're set back another two days.

On Thursday, they tail Spock and Kirk to a beach... Where Kirk unexpectedly goes for a spontaneous swim and Spock reclines on the sand, meditating.

Nyla spares a few minutes watching Kirk gallivanting in the water, but seriously, she is not into old professors. And it doesn't look like they're going to kiss anytime soon, considering there's about two-hundred feet between the pair. The cadets go home and wait for Tuesday.

The next week Nyla and T'Mir follow their prey to a restaurant called 'Bix'. It's a weird place with a 1930s theme and soft Jazz music playing in the front of the room, but the atmosphere is nice. They're seated into a booth right across from Kirk and Spock's, which is both great and mortifying.

It would probably be nicer if Nyla weren't trying to subtly sink into her seat in the probably-vain hope that her superior officers won't notice they're being stalked.

T'Mir – who, as a Vulcan, is automatically twice as noticeable as Nyla here on Earth – looks completely unperturbed and unashamed, which is kind of admirable. She glances at Spock and Kirk very regularly and Nyla realizes that this is happening at intervals of exactly 8 seconds apart. Well, damn.

The place is very quiet. If Nyla strains, she can hear Kirk speaking:

“...not quite authentic, but it's nice anyway.”

“I would have thought you had had quite enough of 1930s Earth, Admiral.”

“As long as we have no responsibilities and McCoy keeps well away from the place, Spock, I'm more than happy to reminisce – it wasn't all bad.”

“Clearly you have forgotten the smell, Sir – I notice they did not reproduce that.”

Kirk laughs.

Nyla shrugs and gives up on trying to make sense of the conversation. She realizes that she shouldn't be so overtly eavesdropping. “So why are you interested in photography anyway, T'Mir?”

T'Mir blinks her gaze away from her blatant-blatant- _blatant_ spying task. “...It is useful on a _curriculum vitae.”_

“Yeah, okay, but so are a lot of things, so what's your real reason?”

T'Mir looks at her piercingly for a long moment. She purses her lips. At length she says, “On Vulcan, I took many pictures of T'Khut at night, when our planet came closest to her sister-planet. I stayed awake for hours without my parents' knowledge to take shots of the rare silver-bird in the morning, though sometimes I stayed awake and found nothing.”

Nyla thinks about this. She smiles a little. “You should show me some of those pictures – they sound neat.”

T'Mir is still staring at her. Nyla realizes that the woman's 8 second pattern has been destroyed. “...Perhaps.”

And when Nyla looks up again, a shiver runs down her spine. Captain Spock is looking straight at her. He turns away and says something to Kirk. The human smiles. They reach up and touch their fingertips together, gently.

There's a small, quiet click. T'Mir swiftly hides her camera. Nyla side-eyes her – if T'Mir is testing the equipment, doing it in front of their targets is kind of sloppy. But Spock and Kirk exit a minute later and she doesn't say anything.

T'Mir looks at her expectantly.

“I thought this place was pretty romantic, too,” she says. “Guess we have to try again.”

T'Mir blinks. Slowly, she nods. “ - What do you suggest?”

* * *

 

“So,” Nyla whispers. “This might not have been my best plan.”

T'Mir inches her head to the side solely for the purpose of raising an unimpressed eyebrow.

They are lying, crammed side-by-side, in the branches of a tree right above Kirk and Spock. It was really a very fortunate choice of venue, Nyla had thought earlier. Except while evening turned to night and most of the park-dwellers departed, Kirk and Spock had remained. They are currently seated right at the base of the tree, apparently debating the merits of Charles Dickens.

What fucking _nerds._

“And that's a fair point,” says Kirk a bit snappishly. “But you have to understand, he could only publish in installments anyway. If he occasionally had to overlook a few plot points to quicken the pace of the conflict, it couldn't be helped - “

“Doubtlessly his works could have been superior if he might have edited the whole rather than working in brief chapters,” Spock says. “Nevertheless, this lost potential does not change the fact that his texts are, as printed, haphazardly constructed and rushed. In _Hard Times_ \- “

“Oh, well, _that_ one - “

Spock raises his voice. “One of the foreshadowed plot points was completely forgotten when - “

T'Mir is breathing very slowly and evenly. Her breaths are blowing Nyla's curls against her cheek with every exhale. It's maddening. She closes her eyes, but then there's nothing else to focus on.

“T'Mir,” she says.

And, oh god, that was a bad decision. T'Mir twists her neck just enough that the tip of her delicate nose brushes Nyla's shoulder.

T'Mir is very tiny, even when her bones are sharp, graceful. God. The weather in San Francisco is horrible, why is it so hot all the time?

“Yes?”

Right. Right. “Do you – do you think this is worth it? All this effort for a dumb picture?” she asks. She hopes she's talking quietly enough, but now Kirk and Spock are raising their voices, talking about _Great Expectations,_ those fucking professors -

T'Mir looks at Nyla evenly. Her eyes are deep and black in the shade of the tree. “Yes,” she says. “Very worth it.”

“Well. Alright, then.”

They wait until nightfall for the two to leave.

(In that time, the Captain and the Admiral go through _Bleak House_ and _Oliver Twist,_ too.)

(Because they're _nerds._ )

* * *

 

Nyla is a grown woman and a Starfleet cadet, dammit. She is not going to be scared from her goal, and certainly not by a little healthy sweat.

And yet.

“Leave me,” she says. “I'm dead.”

T'Mir glances back at her. “You are not dead. But if you believe you are, you may be suffering from Cotard-delusion - “

“It's an exaggeration, T'Mir.”

“I see.”

“It means I'm _dying,”_ she clarifies, because T'Mir is clearly not taking this seriously enough. “How do those two old geezers hike so far? This is awful.”

“As a member of Starfleet, you should be accustomed to physical exercise.”

“I'm going to work on that... later.”

T'Mir quirks an eyebrow and effortlessly jumps on top of a two-foot rock in her path. Ugh.

Spock and Kirk are hiking alone, like the crazy people they are, no group or anything. As far as Nyla can see they don't even have proper equipment, but Spock seems to have some funny boots on. “He is very logical,” T'Mir had said at this sight, seeming to approve. Whatever. It's not like they have equipment, so if Spock's logical, they're clearly _not._

“It's got to be obvious we're following them by now. Seriously.”

“Quite possibly,” T'Mir speculates. “I do not believe we have succeeded in being subtle.”

“You think?”

“But, we may still get the picture. Look; they are stopping for lunch.”

“Oh, thank you,” says Nyla prayerfully. She drops to the ground on the spot, groaning and bending forward to release the pressure in her back. T'Mir pauses, then walks over to her.

“If you like,” she says, clasping her hands in front of her, “I can perform a massage technique on your shoulders.”

“Really? I know Vulcans don't like to touch - “

“It would be no trouble.”

Well, if she's offering. “Thanks. Go for it.”

Nyla would like to know what they teach in Vulcan-school, please, because T'Mir has some magic fingers. She presses into a strange spot over her spine that makes Nyla shiver and arch. She bites her lip and then can't keep from babbling.

“It's been a long time since I've gotten a massage, I usually can't. This – this feels great, really, you're really great at this - “

“You cannot usually get massages?” T'Mir prompts. She stimulates a place beneath Nyla's shoulder-blade that makes her sigh.

“I mean. I guess I make noises and it sounds a bit, uh, inappropriate - “

“How so?”

She's glad her cheeks are too dark for blushes to show easily. “Um. You know, by human interpretations of... the... word... do you think those two are moving yet?”

T'Mir moves her hands away as Nyla stands, which is disappointing. Nyla can see very well that Spock and Kirk are still sitting higher up on the path, but to her surprise they start to stir just as she watches. “Huh. Guess we better pack up.”

As the two start to move down, she realizes; “Oh, shoot.”

“What is the problem?”

“Now they're coming down – How are we supposed to stop them from seeing us?”

T'Mir glances around the path. “...J believe there are places enough to hide. But I hope you do not have much coursework to attend to tonight.”

“See, I was afraid you were going to say that.”

* * *

 

“I officially refuse to believe those two aren't dating.”

“We have yet to obtain a photo of the necessary human kiss.”

“T'Mir, we are in a _gay bar_.”

“Nevertheless.”

'Gay bar' is probably not the most accurate term – maybe not accurate at all – but there are dancing, shirtless men on a stage and other scantily-clad men serving drinks around the room, which is more like a large and comfortable lounge with a small stage. Nyla has never been anywhere like this before. Everyone is slim and lean and wearing very tight pants and basically Nyla is about three seconds away from reaching over and covering T'Mir's eyes for her own good.

T'Mir, for her part, looks a bit fascinated.

“Admiral Kirk just tipped one of the men,” she says.

“Of fucking course he did,” Nyla says. “Jesus strike me, I did not need to know these things about my professors. Why do my professors have more exciting lives than me. Why.”

“Perhaps you are boring.”

“Thank you, T'Mir, that is very helpful. Thank you.”

“Captain Spock is holding the Admiral's hand.”

“That – that is weird. That is very weird. They are staring at a young man's crotch and holding hands, but they are not kissing, what the actual hell. Do they know we're here? Are they doing this on purpose to spite us?”

T'Mir does not reject this possibility, but she does say, “The Admiral is whispering in the Captain's ear.”

Nyla squirms around in her chair. “I'm – not going to think about what he's saying. Please tell me they look like they're going to leave.”

“How interesting. For some reason, the Captain has leaned back and is closing his eyes - “

Nyla puts her face in one hand, reaches down, and thrusts the camera at T'Mir. “Take a picture if they kiss. And please, please, stop talking.”

* * *

 

“Okay,” says Nyla, fanning herself. T'Mir watches Nyla's dubious attempt to lower her temperature with a raised eyebrow, so she stops. “This isn't going well.”

“Clearly not.”

They're sitting together in a small study-room in the library. Nyla guesses this might count as some form of studying. They're studying for how to get into the Photography club, right?

“Okay,” she says. “New plan. If we can find a miniature camera and plant it - “

The door to the practice room opens with a mild swish. “Am I interrupting?”

Nyla goes very still.

T'Mir looks up. “Not at all, Admiral.”

Admiral Kirk grins at her and, without ceremony, takes a seat at their table. “You know,” he says, “I think I've seen you two around a lot lately.”

Nyla can barely breathe.

“With cameras,” he adds. “ - You wouldn't happen to be in the photography club, would you?”

“Prospective members,” T'Mir informs him.

“Ah. Excuse me. Prospective members. I suppose I should have known that.”

Nyla opens her mouth. Closes it.

Is this the kind of situation where an apology is even useful?

Admiral Kirk catches her eye. His grin widens. And then he leans in. “Here's some free advice, ladies. No one gets that picture. No one has, no one will. But - “ He winks. “I hope you had a good time anyway.” He pauses a beat. “ - Good day, cadets.”

“Good day, Admiral Kirk,” says T'Mir.

Kirk stands, then pauses to grin at her. “God, I love Vulcans,” he says.

And he leaves.

Nyla sinks her head into her hands with a groan.

“...Interesting,” says T'Mir.

“ _That is not the word I would have used,”_ Nyla hisses.

“He claimed that no one gets the picture of a kiss, though the club members claimed otherwise,” T'Mir says.

She'll puzzle that out later. Someone is lying, somewhere. “I don't want to think about it. I don't. Ugh.”

They are both silent for a moment. Nyla is trying to reconcile herself with the potential of her possibly-shattered career; who knows what T'Mir is thinking. “Either way, we didn't get a single picture,” says Nyla finally. The silence is starting to get to her. She never can stand silence for long. “Not a single kiss, I mean, even a friendly peck on the cheek.”

“Did the Photography club not specify that the kiss should be human in type?”

“What?”

“I presumed, when we continued to watch the Admiral and Captain Spock after the first day, that the kiss needed to be of the human style.”

“...What do you mean.”

“They have performed a Vulcan kiss on every day of our observation thus far. Did you not notice?”

“What – You – I - “ Nyla gapes. “What's a Vulcan kiss look like?”

T'Mir raises two fingers in the air. “It is performed with the hand,” she says. “As my people are touch-telepaths, we can gain certain sensations when in physical contact with another person – like so - “

She reaches down gently to touch Nyla's hand.

It's a warm, buzzing jolt – a ghostly shade that presses into Nyla's skin and down between her eyes. She sucks air between her teeth. T'Mir pulls away but the touch seems to linger in small charges of heat that dart up her chest. She blinks dazedly. Vulcans do that all the time?

T'Mir ducks her head. “ - Perhaps it is easier with practice,” she adds demurely.

Nyla's throat feels dry. “Yeah?” she says, and swallows. “Huh. We – we should get those pictures to the, the Photography club.” She pauses. “ - after some more practice, maybe.”

T'Mir glances up.

And Nyla grins.


End file.
